Cap felt woozy. His stomach felt heavy, like all his blood had pooled there, stealing away all the oxygen from his brain and leaving him on the verge of passing out.
He stared at the window.
Tap… tap… tap… tap….
They were there. All of them.
The killer.
The hanged man.
The black and white face, a fireman and a prostitute crushed together by a falling beam and passing through eternity mangled into one monstrosity.
The boy whose skull stood open to the night.
And on and on and on. And Cap felt certain that every one of the faces outside was one that he would find in the leather book Sarah still held, either photographed or described.
They were outside the attic window, gray faces, dead faces. They extended beyond the reach of the roof, and Cap intuited that if he went outside he would see them standing in the air, feet solidly planted on nothing more than the mist.
Tap… tap… tap….
The killer was tapping on the glass with his knife. Smiling. Beckoning. The twin grins – one above his chin, one below – were no less horrible now that Cap knew where they were from.
He heard something behind him. It was a small sound, one that shouldn’t have registered in the sudden insanity into which he had been plunged. But for some reason it not only managed to pierce the walls of madness around him, but made itself seem important. Critically important.
Cap turned. He saw the source of the sound. It was Sarah. She had turned the page. She had gasped as she stared at it. Cap couldn’t see what was on the page. Didn’t want to see. It was all too much.
Tap… tap… tap….
At the same time, he heard something batter at the door at the bottom of the stairs. It wasn’t a fleshy sound; not the sound of a hand slapping or even a shoulder pummeling the wood. It was a solid noise, the sound of metal on wood. The door started to crack and crackle instantly.
Tap… tap… tap….
WHAM! WHAM!
The chanting ululated through the room. Louder than it had ever been. Louder, closer, stronger. And at the same time, Cap heard once more the sound he had heard earlier, the sound that had come while they watched the killer sewing his fingers together.
Krrrrick-tic-tic-tic-tic-tic.
The sounds were overwhelming. Cap put his hands over his ears. He screamed.
CRASH!
The attic door smashed open, the chair giving way and falling to kindling. The night-cloaked figures were there. All of them. Pressing up the stairs. Their devilish chanting crushing him, pushing him away, forcing his mind to flee to a place of madness and death.
The tapping stopped when the chanting began. Cap heard a howling, a horrific shrieking like the wind, like a banshee chorus come to announce the death of the entire human race. He managed to look toward the sound. It was the ghosts. Gray, bloodless faces blurred, as though they were phasing in and out of this reality. Mouths open. Shrieking. Screaming.
Cap looked back at the dark creatures coming toward them. They were almost there. Walking up the stairs in a single file, a midnight column of despair. The lead demons reached out to him.
They were halfway up.
Cap had one thought remaining in his terror struck mind. He clung to it, a fortress island in an ocean of fear.
Sarah and the baby!
“Leave us alone!” he screamed, and turned toward Sarah.
She seemed completely unaware of the doom that was ascending the stairs, the death that waited outside the window.
She was staring. At the book, at the damned book.
“Hon?” Cap managed to say. It was almost a shout, his hands still against his ears.
Sarah didn’t answer. Gave no indication that she had even heard him. She was utterly ensnared by the object of her gaze. More than that, she seemed far away. Not just mentally, but physically. It seemed as though the room had expanded to the length of a football field. Sarah was at one end, he at the other.
He looked behind him. The darkness was more than halfway up the stairs. The things moved slowly, with purpose. As though aware that there was nowhere else for Cap and Sarah to flee to. They were inevitable and implacable as an approaching wave. And Cap felt like a quadriplegic placed just below the high tide line, helpless before the certainty of being crushed under the obsidian swell coming toward him.
Cap looked at Sarah again. She still wasn’t moving. She wouldn’t be any help.
Doesn’t matter. Stop them. Save her. Save the baby. That’s all that matters.
The thoughts were familiar somehow.
Doesn’t matter.
Cap turned to face the onslaught. The inky creatures were three quarters of the way up the stairs. He inhaled, trying to quell the queasiness that was welling up inside him. He prepared for a last stand. He was going to throw himself at the things, try to buy Sarah some time.
He wasn’t going to survive.
Doesn’t matter.
He put a single foot behind him. Ready to lunge forward. To throw himself down the stairs. To tumble to his doom – or worse. And it would be worth it. He would die trying to protect his family.
He would be at peace.
One more breath. He tensed, and –
“Honey?”
The soft sound of Sarah’s voice slipped between the cracks in the wall of noise. He heard it clearly.
The things on the stairs were still coming. Six steps from the top.
Cap turned to his wife. Maybe she would be able to run now. Maybe she had come out of the catatonic stupor that had gripped her. Maybe….
Crrr-ack!
He glanced at the window midway through his turn. The ghosts were still screaming, but those who were closest to the glass were also reaching forward. Dead hands pressed against the window. Their palms – some unmarked, others warped by wounds and black with blood – pushed flat against it. There was a thin line up one of the panes. The glass was cracking.
They were getting in.
“Honey?” Sarah said again.
He looked at her. She still had that faraway aspect. As though she was forever beyond his grasp. But he knew that was wrong. She was there, he just had to reach out for her.
She let go of the book.
It fell to the floor. But time seemed to be acting strangely. It fell slowly, as though gravity had lost some of its hold over the things in this room.
“What?” Cap said. And though she was still seemed far away, it was in that instant as though nothing else existed. The ghosts were gone. The black line of death coming up the stairs no longer endured. The attic disappeared.
Just him.
Just her.
And the book. Falling. Falling. Falling forever and beyond.
“Where was the fire?” Sarah asked.
“What?”
The sound of glass crackling. Spiderweb fractures in the window.
“Where was the fire?”
The book was still falling.
“Why are you asking about this?” Cap heard himself say. His voice demanded answers, demanded that she get up and fight with him, that she run. That she save herself.
Just like The Before.
“We’re about to –” he continued.
She interrupted him. “WHERE WAS THE FIRE?”
He couldn’t see them, but he knew that the shadow creatures, the beings of doom and death and darkness, were at the top of the stairs.
“I…,” he began. His face wrinkled in confusion.
The book fell.
And fell.
And fell.
“I don’t know,” he finally said.
The book hit the floor, the spine touching the wood with a muffled thump.
The front and back cover slapped down against the floor, spread-eagled like a vivisection victim. The pages fluttered like the yellowed wings of fallen angels, flapping to one side and to another. The book settled, open to the middle.
The pages began turning. As though
an unseen hand was flipping through them. Trying to find the right spot to look.
Pages flapped by. Back and forth, back and forth. Pictures and articles. The killer. The hanged man. The conjoined ghost.
Headlines crawled like centipedes across the moving pages.
“Dunhill Robber Captured.”
“Murder Most Foul.”
“Local Priest Commits Suicide.”
More and more and more. Each page a history of life, each page a memento of death linked to this house.
“When did you buy the monitor?” asked Sarah. The words didn’t sink in, they glanced off his mind like a slow-moving bullet off Kevlar. She must have seen his confusion, because she added, “The baby monitor.”
“I….” Cap’s head hurt.
Don’t do it, don’t do it, don’t say it, Sarah, just leave it alone.
“I thought you did,” he finally managed. It was true. He thought she had been the one to pack the monitor. He thought she had done it without telling him, arranging for him to find it as a strange but kind surprise.
Sarah shook her head. “I didn’t buy it,” she said.
She held out her hand. He reached for her, and in spite of the feeling that they were hundreds of feet apart, his fingers clasped hers. She pulled him to her.
The pages of the book continued flapping as though in an invisible wind, though they were moving slower now.
“Why aren’t we wet?” Sarah said.
Again, the words were English, but the thought behind them wasn’t penetrating Cap’s mind. “What?” he said.
“We were in the rain. Why aren’t we wet?”
Cap felt his clothes. She was right. He was bone-dry. Even though they had climbed onto the balcony in the rainstorm. Even though they had crawled on hands and knees across the soaked roof. He wasn’t wet. Neither was she.
“They must have dried,” he finally said. But he knew that wasn’t true. That was a lie. Because the entire flight across the rooftop replayed suddenly in his mind.
Father Michael grabs at the dark monster that tried to pull Cap away from the attic. Smoke curls up from the priest as he comes into contact with the dark thing.
The priest is completely dry.
Cap tried to force his thoughts away from what came next. From the truth. The path to The Before.
On the roof, Cap, too, is dry. The rain falls around them, so much that the roof is treacherously slick – he even slipped on the streaming water. But he himself is not wet. Never had been. Sarah, too, is dry, though she was also in the rain, also on the roof, dry though she even now is leaning out of the attic window to grab him. Her hair, which always curled in the slightest humidity, hangs straight to her shoulders.
“They must have dried,” he repeated lamely.
“No,” Sarah said. She shook her head. “We’re dry.”
Behind him, he heard the window shatter into a million pieces. He looked at it, searching for a way to hide from what Sarah was saying. The ghosts slid into the room like a dark flood.
Sarah’s hands touched his cheeks. She forced him to look at her. “Where’s the blood?”
Cap closed his eyes, but he couldn’t close his mind.
The knife of the killer bites deep and he cries out as it slashes through the long-sleeved shirt he is wearing and slices into his arm. Blood flies in the dark, dripping from Cap’s arm even as the ghost draws back.
Cap looked down. He didn’t want to. Looking down was like looking back, and looking back was like looking into the past, and looking into the past meant looking into The Before. But he couldn’t stop himself. He looked at his arm. The sleeve was whole. There was no blood anywhere. He realized his hands, which had been burnt and blistered and scratched, were also whole and unmarked. So were Sarah’s hands, though he had seen blood on them earlier. He touched his ears, and the blood that he had remembered being there was gone. Even the vomit from when they both threw up on themselves had somehow disappeared.
He felt himself wanting suddenly to scream. He started hyperventilating and felt like every drop of blood had left his face. He covered his face with his hands.
“I… I don’t know.” The words came in hitching bursts. Tears pressed behind his eyes. “What’s going on?”
He looked at the book at Sarah’s feet. The pages turning. One at a time now. The last pages near.
Sarah tilted his face to hers again. Her eyes were luminous even in the darkness of the attic. “What happened to my baby?” she said.
Cap shook his head.
But it was too late. He was there. Sarah had acted like she was the one who was afraid of it, and he knew she was. She was afraid. But at least she could think of it, even mention it occasionally. Not him. He was too wracked by terror at the thought of what had happened.
The thought of The Before.
23
The Before
***
He dreams. Good dreams. Dreams of Sarah. Of making love. Of the baby she carries.
Of the new house.
It was cheap. A bargain. The sales agent had sold it to them for a song. Sure, it was old and needed a lot of work. But it was something they could afford. It had potential.
Just like the child. Just like his baby.
He dreams. Dreams of the house. The family. The future.
Then he smells something in his dreams. A pungent, acrid odor. A tangy, biting thing that nips him out of sleep.
He sits up in the bed without realizing it, and blinks back the dreams. They are gone.
He is here. In The Now.
Smoke fills the room. And more than that, it enters his lungs, pushing into him like a vicious parasite that will feed off him and leave him nothing but a dry husk. He coughs. His mind is still soaked in sleep, but the dreams evaporate quickly in the heat of the roiling clouds around him.
He shakes the form next to him.
“Sarah. Sarah, wake up!”
His wife bats his hand away. “It’s not morning yet,” she says thickly, her voice muffled by the blankets pulled up beyond her chin.
“Sarah, get up!”
The panic in his voice must have penetrated the sleep-fog, because she rolls over. Then sits up. Slowly. Her belly keeps her from moving quickly. She blinks.
“What’s going on?” she says.
He doesn’t answer, just moves. He is up and out of bed in an instant. He moves fast, darting around the bed to her side. He holds out a hand. She takes it. His other hand goes behind her back, helping her to stand. He suddenly wishes she wasn’t pregnant, or at least wasn’t in the last trimester.
Something crashes somewhere in the house. Bad things are happening. Very bad things.
“Get up,” he says harshly. “Get up!” He pulls her to her feet, yanking her harder than he means to, but panic energizes his muscles. He steadies her, makes sure she isn’t going to fall. Then he runs to the closed door to the bedroom. He touches the knob. It’s hot.
He thinks for a moment of the balcony. He runs to it. But before he opens the door he sees that the balcony is already engulfed in flames. There is no way out there.
“Cap!” says Sarah. The sound is almost a sob. His heart wrenches, but he cannot comfort her. There is no time for comfort. He does not even know if there is time for survival.
He runs back to the door. He untucks the long-sleeved shirt he wore to bed and wraps the edge of it around his hand. He grabs the doorknob, and feels his hand blister even through the layers of cotton with which he has tried to protect himself.
The pain barely registers. He has to save his family.
He twists the knob, and throws the door open.
He remembers seeing news reports, stories of people who have died in their homes, not of flames but of smoke inhalation. He always wondered at those stories, confused at how someone could possibly succumb to such a thing – especially when so many of them were feet or even inches away from a door or window or some other avenue of egress. But in the instant that he opens the door,
he understands. Smoke billows in, a malevolent black cloud that fills the room instantly, cutting off his sight.
“Sarah! Sarah!”
He can’t see her through the smoke! Can’t see her anywhere, oh, God, he can’t see her!
“I’m here!”
Relief pours into him like cool water on a hot day as hands reach out and grasp his. The relief disappears, though, as a wave of heat rolls in. He feels his skin dry instantly, feels the fine hairs on his hands singe away.
He tries to lean down, supporting Sarah as they attempt to get under the smoke. They have to get out.
The next moments are confusing images that fail to translate into understanding.
Can’t see anything. Too smoky.
Fire everywhere.
He pulls his wife. Trying to get her out.
Save her. Have to save her. Have to save the baby.
Fire in the hall. Have to go there anyway. Only a few steps. Just a few steps.
Then the stairs. Down the stairs. Easy. His hand holding hers. Pulling her with him.
She screams, curls in on herself. He knows it’s the baby. Suffering from the fire.
Oh, God, please save her.
He shields Sarah as a beam crashes down in front of them. Fire sheathes it, the heat pulsing from it in visible waves.
They have to get past it. He knows she can’t jump it. He scoops her into his arms and steps over the beam. The flames lick at his bare feet. He feels fire jump from the beam to the elastic cuffs of his sweat pants.
He doesn’t care. He doesn’t matter. He just has to get her out.
He puts her down. Slaps at the fire on his pants with his bare hands. He doesn’t matter, but if he’s on fire he won’t be able to save her. Save them. Her and the baby.
The fire is small enough that he snuffs it under his palms, though the pain of doing so is terrible.
They rush down the stairs. He hears crackling/crunching/squealing/screaming all around them, the wail of wood under attack. He knows they just have to get down the stairs, and from there it’s only a few short steps to the front door or even to the windows if the door is blocked. It’s close.
We’re going to make it.
The last step. The final stair.
He steps off. He can’t see the door. But he knows where it is. This is only their second night in the house, but he has already memorized the layout.
The Haunted Page 20